"Yes," I replied. "You'll hang for this."
"I don't care. My father has five other sons and can spare me. But my one regret," he said, and again a baleful light shone in his eyes, "is that my worst enemy still lives."
I turned away from him and interrogated Ranjit Singh about the capture.
When the havildar learned that the man he was pursuing had crossed the river after he had been seen in Hathipota, he followed with the two men of the patrol. On the other side they picked up his trail, which led to another village. Near it they met some peasants and learned from them that Farid Khan was in this village. Approaching cautiously they dodged from hut to hut until they saw him sitting on the ground before a bunniah's shop, eating food which he had just bought. His rifle lay beside him. They crept up behind him, for they were resolved to take him alive, rushed on him suddenly and tumbled him over before he could seize his weapon. As they held him down and bound him, he said:
"It was lucky for you, havildar, that I did not see you first. I had my magazine full and would have shot you all."
After his capture he seemed resigned to his fate and scarcely spoke again until he was brought before me. I praised Ranjit Singh and his patrol warmly and then fell in my men. We marched back to Hathipota, where we halted for the night. Next day we reached Buxa.
I was determined that our prisoner should not cheat the gallows by escape or suicide. So night and day for the two months that elapsed before he was brought to trial a guard was mounted over him in his cell. All through those weary weeks of waiting his indifferent demeanour never changed. I visited him every day. To my inquiries as to whether he had any request to make, he always replied respectfully. But he never acknowledged that he had had any accomplices in his crime; and I was never able to bring his comrade Gulab Khan to trial.
At last the orders came to conduct Farid Khan to Calcutta to appear before a general court martial. We marched out of the fort and down to Buxa Road Railway Station with the prisoner in the centre of a guard of six men with fixed bayonets. By one of his wrists he was handcuffed to a burly Rajput over six feet high. These precautions were necessary, as the journey would take a day and a night and necessitated many changes; and I was determined to give Farid Khan no chance to escape. At Gitaldaha we had to wait for some time for another train which brought us in the early morning to the banks of the River Ganges. Across this we were taken in a steamer, the passage occupying over an hour. Our appearance excited much interest among the passengers on board, some of whom were American tourists returning from a flying visit to Darjeeling. My party, including the witnesses and the escort, was quite a large one; and I heard one fair daughter of Uncle Sam remark:
"Wa'al, it takes a lot of soldiers to guard that one poor man."
One of her male companions, who addressed me as "Officer!" questioned me as to the prisoner's crime, and seemed quite disappointed at learning that it was only murder.